Disaster Recovery: Executing the Plan

You've come up with a disaster recovery plan for your business, gotten stakeholder buy in, and documented it. Now it's time to put your plan into practice.

Having a disaster recovery plan for your business is critical. But just having a document on a server or printed up in binders in the IT department doesn't help anyone. In this article, we delve into what it takes to turn your plan into a reality. But first, let's recap the steps for creating a disaster recovery strategy for your business or organization:

First is the pre-planning stage, which includes identifying mission-critical IT systems necessary to keep the organization afloat in event of a disaster. Next, you'll need to get key members of your business on board in creating the plan; these people could include management, facilities department staff, and others who need to be involved in creating and agreeing on a companywide disaster recovery strategy. The third step is to document the plan and incorporate it into your company's official policies.

Now you need to choose the tools and technology needed to put a disaster recovery plan into action. You don't have to be part of the IT department in a company to plan for disaster recovery. Even sole proprietors, those who run home businesses and other entrepreneurs can follow the same recipe for ensuring minimal impact to their business in case of an emergency.

Whether running a business from home or heading up an IT department, anyone who needs to protect systems and data in event of an emergency has to be involved in deploying and configuring the technology and tools available to help you minimize the impact of a disaster on systems, data, and operations as much as possible.

From cloud computing to RDX media, there is a host of solutions and guidance out there to help you keep all systems go in the event of disaster.

Virtualization and Cloud Computing Virtualization provides much more than simply reducing physical server sprawl in a datacenter. With virtualization you have powerful capabilities that can be part of a disaster recovery plan.

For example, both VMware and Microsoft's Hyper-V, offers snapshots of virtual machines. With snapshots, a virtual machine running a critical system application, for example, can quickly be restored to another host machine if the original host fails or becomes unavailable in an emergency. With virtual snapshots, the VM's state, data, and configuration are all restored when the snapshot is migrated to another machine. Snapshots can be taken on an automated schedule, making the process more efficient. Virtualization provides a way to easily restore practically an entire infrastructure without requiring a lot of time to do so.

Virtualization is at the core of cloud computing. Vendors such as Axcient and DataCore can store and run your datacenter in the cloud, making it easy to move from on-premise to a cloud computing model, which can be a lifesaver in the event of a disaster.

Axcient offers a unified cloud solution for SMBs that lets an organization place every app, data, and business-critical process in the cloud. In a disaster, the virtual infrastructure, hosted by Axcient is ready to go when the on-premise infrastructure is not available. As Axcient's Todd Scallan, VP of Products says, "Why backup your data when you can virtualize your business at the same cost? Today, businesses move faster than ever—and are only getting faster. It's either business at full throttle or get left behind."

Virtualization has allowed vendors to come up with innovative ways to keep businesses intact whether the disaster is as localized as a single server failing, or what Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing, DataCore Software calls, a "'CNN-level," wide-spread , catastrophic disaster garnering tons of media coverage.

Virtualization is a major component of DataCore's disaster recovery solution for business. Its SANsymphony-V storage hypervisors allows for rewinding any virtual disk back to the moment prior to a disruption. DataCore also enables stretch site mirroring for business continuity, to eliminate the impact of disk or single system failures. The storage hypervisor technology from DataCore also offers multi-site replication to recover from critical disasters.

Backup For many businesses at the smaller end of the SMB market spectrum, a solid backup plan may be all that is required to be prepared for a disaster. With storage available in unprecedented capacity, and the convenience of the cloud versus having to manage local storage, there really is no excuse not to have, at minimum, a robust data backup strategy. Many vendors offer automated backup of business data via the Internet; ideal of a small business that does not even have IT staff.

MozyPro will automatically and continuously back up office data, eliminating gaps caused by less frequent manual backup processes. A solution such as this is important because your business is getting continuous backup that does not require much in the way of a business owners' or IT's intervention.

For businesses with highly-sensitive data, some backup providers can address any data security concerns. SOS for Business provides military grade encryption. The company uses a three-tiered approach when it comes to securing backups: data is encrypted locally on the computer before being transferred over an encrypted connection and finally copied to the SOS cloud where the file is kept, encrypted, in multiple, geographically-separated data centers. So your business data is getting a double-layer of redundancy. SOS offers an additional security option, UltraSafe, encrypts data with a private key that only the account-holder has access to, even the team at SOS can't access the data.

EVault not only offers online backup, but the EVault Cloud Disaster Recovery Service backs up or replicates your systems to the EVault cloud. The vendor incorporates virtualization into the solution so that when there's a disaster, critical systems are recovered as virtual machines.

A big benefit of using such online providers is that end users can access the infrastructure as long as they have an Internet connection. This is especially useful if they have been displaced from the office because of an emergency.

Off-Site Contingency Plans Still, many organizations want or need to keep data and systems on-premise. Let's face it; many simply don't want their data residing in the cloud. A significant portion of SMBs still rely on backup to media with regular rotation of backup copies between the office and an off-site location for safe storage.

For these businesses, RDX media is widely used as backup media. Rusty Rosenberger, Director, Imation Scalable Storage Global Product Management stresses, "Having only an on-site copy of your data is not enough. SMBs need a system that will not only provide an on-site copy of data for fast restoration, but also an off-site copy if the disaster warrants that. RDX media is a great option and serves as a unique insurance plan for disaster-proofing your business."

- Hot Server Sites are live, remote failover locations. Data is replicated between the main site and the alternative site. The benefit is faster recovery in an emergency. The downside is that implementing a hot server site can be costly and require much management.

There are vendor solutions for businesses that replicate data between a main site and disaster contingency site. NetApp Syncsort Integrated Backup (NSB) consolidates backups from any primary storage environment, and replication is handled by NetApp Snap Mirror, centralizing all replication onto a single platform no matter what mix of primary storage an organization has. All data recovery processes are run from the same NSB console as the regular backups, and the recovery workflows are the same. If the IT admin knows how to restore locally, then they can restore at the disaster recovery site, which reduces learning curves and management overhead.

- Warm Server Sites are sites with operating systems and applications running that match the main site. Data is usually restored from backup at a warm server site. These sites are usually less costly because there isn't need for constant replication between the main site and backup site as long as the data is available (usually from media) in the event of a disaster. The problem of course is that restoring data can take time.

- Cold Server sites are typically remote locations designated as alternative places to run a infrastructure in an emergency. Systems are rebuilt and data then restored. Often, a cold server site will have nothing but a few physical servers that can be installed with an OS and bottom-line critical apps and data in an emergency. The upside to a cold server site is less cost and little management: The site is only prepared for operation in emergency scenarios. Of course, having to reinstall OSes, apps, and data, can be quite time-consuming.

Telecommunications Maintaining communications is also important. In a disaster the chances are high that Internet, cell, and even landline communications may be unavailable for a period of time. As part of executing the disaster recovery planning, consider mixing up communications. For instance, if you have a VoIP system in place, consider placing emergency POTS lines on-site—if one telecom system is unavailable, another may work in an emergency. Consider a copper landline for emergency faxing, if fax lines are on a VoIP system, as well. In additional a backup Internet connection can be put in place: DSL, cable, or even a dial-up connection can all be considered.

Don't scoff at the idea of backup beepers. Beepers will often work when cell phones don't. In fact, many pager companies, long past their heyday, are re-marketing themselves as part of a company's disaster planning solution.

Power No systems can be placed in operation when the power fails in a disaster. UPS solutions such as those from APC, TrippLite, and other UPS vendors can provide backup power for minutes to hours. When deciding on which UPS devices are appropriate for your contingency plans, you need to take into account which systems must be connected to backup power, their voltage and requirements, and the amount of backup power time needed. Confused about selecting the right UPS? Many of the top vendors offer tools on their website to help you make this important decision, for instance APC offers its product selector tool.

Next Steps There's certainly a lot of information to sift through, products to weigh, and research to do when deciding on the technology needed to execute a disaster recovery plan. Once you've decided on the equipment and services required to keep the technology infrastructure intact at best, and at a level that doesn't cripple operations at minimum, it's time to start training staff and holding emergency drills. We'll cover training and practice in the next article in this series.

Samara Lynn has nearly twenty years experience in Information Technology; most recently as IT Director at a major New York City healthcare facility. She has a Bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, several technology certifications, and she was a tech editor for the CRN Test Center.
With an extensive, hands-on background in deploying and managing Microsoft Windows infrastructures and networking, she was included in Black Enterprise's "20 Black Women in Tech You Need to Follow on Twitter," and received the 2013 Small Business Influencer Top 100 Champions...
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